younger – Mediocre Mum

How to talk to young kids about the internet?

I think it’s time I started talking about internet safety

A few months ago I attended a round table event hosted by AVG, where we spoke about online safety and how confident parents felt about dealing with it. As a Technology Consultant in Education I do feel that I have a slight advantage to some parents when it comes to the technical aspects, but I also feel a bit clueless about when I should start addressing it and how I’m going to do it.

How young is too young?

My daughter is nearly 6 and one of my priorities is to keep her as safe as possible online. To date I’ve really only addressed the technical aspects of this, setting restrictions on our ipad, smartphones and we supervise her when she is on the PC but I haven’t delved into actually ‘talking’ to her about the potential dangers of the net as I still think she is a bit young. But I may be wrong.

However, now that she has started reading and writing I think we’ll need to start talking about this ‘very’ soon. I’ve spent a fair amount time looking around the net for guidance and have written about it in the past ‘How to Keep Younger Children Safe Online’. However, the majority of stuff I find is more targeted at slightly older children with reference to chat rooms, grooming and cyber bullying.

Be afraid, be very afraid!

At the meeting, I met Will Gardner the CEO of Childnet International, who spends a large part of his time travelling the country researching and talking to teens/kids about online safety. I was truly horrified by some of the stuff that he’s come across and it’s far too graphic to detail on a family blog. There I was thinking that sexting was simply naughty text messages. Oh boy, was I wrong!

Resources for Keeping Younger Children Safer Online

Following the meeting, as Will was aware I was more interested in resources for younger children, he sent me a couple of really useful resources. They have written a short guidance sheet for parents ‘Keeping Younger Kids Safe Online‘ which is worth a read and the second was a copy of a delightful book about friendship and internet responsibility called Digiduck’s Big Decision (£2.80), which is the perfect way of introducing younger children to the dangers of the internet without giving them nightmares. You can also read Digiduck’s Big Decision online.

I think like all other good habits we instill in our kids like healthy eating, excercise, hygiene and education we need to teach our kids about online safety at an early age so that responsible internet use becomes natural.

Thanks to Will for firing through these resources. Your timing was perfect. If anyone else has any Online Safety Resources for Younger Children I should have a look at please do add them in the comments section.

How to Keep Younger Children Safer When Using Computers

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More than a third of all 3-4 year-olds are now accessing the internet in their homes. My daughter has been accessing computers since she was two, and swipe technology has made this possible. She whizzes around the iPhone and iPad better than her father does and can often be seen on my lap searching the internet for answers to questions I don’t know the answer to (e.g. why don’t electric eels shock themselves?). She is truly a digital native. She is now five.

As an ICT consultant, I train teachers for a living on the use of hardware and software in the classroom and I strongly believe that these technologies can positively impact her learning. However, I don’t want her spending day in and day out in front of the screen.

I know a lot of parents are reluctant to allow their children to access these technologies and rightly so. The internet can be a dangerous place, but I do feel that children who are denied access may be put at a disadvantage academically.

I’ve been doing a bit of research about e-safety and younger children, aged 3-5, but everything I read tends to relate to slightly older children who are able to read and write. My daughter is just learning to read and write so I found that a lot of the information was not relevant to this stage as it was talking about chat rooms, cyber bullying, etc so I thought I’d put together a short list of my top tips for keeping younger children safer when online.

In our house, she has supervised access to iPhones, iPads and a PC. This is where my experience lies so this article is based on that. However, I’m sure it can be translated to Androids, Macs and other tablets. Do chip in the comments section.

My top 10 tips for keeping younger children safer

When using an iPad or iPhone

I’ve learned a few of these the hard way – just remember that the settings are your friend.

1.) Turn off In-App Purchase to avoid any nasty surprises! I’ve written about this in the past when my neighbour nearly got stung with a £70 bill from iTunes.

You can do this in Setting>General>Restrictions and turn off In-App Purchases

2.) Turn of Location Services – this one really scared the crap out of me. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that someone could identify my daughter’s location using it. Eeeek! I have now turned it off! It’s in Restrictions as well.

3.) Disable Safari and YouTube – My daughter and I do go onto YouTube and Google as I mentioned earlier, but only when we are together, so to ensure she doesn’t find her way on there when I’m not looking I have disabled them. It’s a bit of a pain as I have to turn it back on again when I want to use it, but I’d rather be safer than sorry.

4.) Set Media Parameters, again it’s in restrictions but you can decide what age range you are comfortable with when watching films or accessing apps. However, if you are using any other subscription-based film services like LoveFilm, you may also have to change the settings there as well. The instructions can be found here.

5.) On the iPad the default is 15 minutes for needing to re-enter a password for purchases. Change this to ‘Immediately’, otherwise they have plenty of time to run up a bill buying stuff.

When using the PC

My daughter rarely uses the PC unless I’m with her and to be honest, I’d rather she use the iPad so that I can get on with my work or faffing around on social networks. But when she does, these are a few things that I have done:

6.) I’ve made a folder for her with a list of favourite sites, which reduces the chances of her getting onto an inappropriate site, but it’s not fail safe.

7.) I have turned on Safe Search Mode on Google so when we are searching together it reduces the chances of us coming across anything unsavoury. Look for the ‘cog’ in the top right corner and select search settings, you should see it in there!

8.) It’s not 100% accurate, but I have also switched on Safety Mode on YouTube.

9.) Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date in case, god forbid, they manage to download something dodgy. I personally use AVG Free.

10.) And lastly, this is true for any type of technology whether it’s a tablet, phone, computer or gaming console. Always keep them in a busy place in the house, so you can keep an eye on what they get up to. We rarely allow the iPad to go up into her room, unless I’m having one of my lazy parenting moments. We can get away with this at the moment as she is only five, but we will cross the next hurdle when we get to it.

Hopefully, this has helped in some way. Do leave any other tips in the comment section below. Go safe out there!

A huge thank you to Geek Mummy and Violet Posy for their valuable contributions to this post.

Things to do at Thorpe Park if you’re 5

‘Mummy, you know that place we went to on the weekend, I call it the best place ever!’ M age 5

Thorpe Park was originally marketed for 16- 24 year olds, so when I first invited myself along, I was a bit worried that there would not be enough for my 5 year old to do. I had a quick look on the site and there were a few rides for kids starting from 900mm through to 1.1m.

The first thing I had to work out was how tall she was. Luckily, she takes after her mum and dad, she’s not freakishly tall but a bit taller than your average 5 year old. Once I got her to stand still, I worked out that she was 116 cm. Result! Plus, we also got her to wear her Heely’s without the wheels which gave her another 3-4 centimetres.

These are all the rides that she was able to go on. We may have been able to sneak her onto a few of the 1.2m rides but didn’t want to jeopardize her safety.

Rides for 5 year olds at Thorpe Park

900mm

Zodiac – spinning sensation, say good-bye to your lunch
Depth Charge – 4 lane super slide
Flying Fish – Bonus, the kids could go on without parental supervision!
Rumba Rapids – Yes, my bum got very wet!
Rocky Express – I can’t believe they went on it 5 times in a row! I would’ve been sick.
Mr. Monkey’s Banana Ride – My daughter’s favourite as it gave her butterflies in her tummy.

1m

Logger’s Leap – a classic log flume with two drops
X – an indoor rollercoaster with a light and sound show

1.1 m

Storm Surge – swirling water ride

As you can see there was more than enough to entertain us for the day and we managed to avoid the Tea Cups. If you count the Carousel she was able to go on at least 10 rides.

Disclosure: our tickets were complimentary.